Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Calumny
Calomniez, calomniez; il en reste toujours quelque chose.
Calumniate, calumniate; there will always be something which sticks.
Beaumarchais—Barbier de Seville. Act III. 13.
Nihil est autem tam volucre, quam maledictum; nihil facilius emittitur; nihil citius excipitur, latius dissipatur.
Nothing is so swift as calumny; nothing is more easily uttered; nothing more readily received; nothing more widely dispersed.
Cicero—Oratio Pro Cnœo Plancio. XXIII.
Calumny is only the noise of madmen.
Diogenes.
A nickname a man may chance to wear out; but a system of calumny, pursued by a faction, may descend even to posterity. This principle has taken full effect on this state favorite.
Isaac D’Israeli—Amenities of Literature. The First Jesuits in England.
Dens Theonina.
Like Theon (i.e. a calumniating disposition).
Horace—Epistles. Bk. I. 18. 82.
There are calumnies against which even innocence loses courage.
Napoleon I.
Virtue itself ’scapes not calumnious strokes.
Hamlet. Act I. Sc. 3. L. 38.
Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny.
Hamlet. Act II. Sc. 1. L. 138.
No might nor greatness in mortality
Can censure ’scape; back-wounding calumny
The whitest virtue strikes. What king so strong,
Can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue?
Measure for Measure. Act III. Sc. 2. L. 146.
Calumny will sear
Virtue itself;—these shrugs, these hums, and ha’s.
Winter’s Tale. Act II. Sc. 1. L. 73.